The busy’ness is causing the diziness

March 7, 2018

Dear Max and Rebecca

One smashed car door that is now at the panelbeaters (it’s been two weeks already). One cellphone that broke after it got damaged by liquid while I was on a run, and had to be replaced (it was unfixable, we were told). One lost driver’s licence. A burst geyser (okay, this one was not my fault, so I guess it doesn’t count).

It’s been an expensive month, and all these expenses could maybe have been averted if I just kept my eye on the ball and my mind in mostly one place.

For starters, the gate “mishap” occurred when I was driving into playschool, and the gate wasn’t as widely open as open as usual, there were workmen around, and I saw a couple I had never seen before walking to their car. Instead of my mind being on getting in, and maybe wondering what I’d eat for lunch later that day (I mean, it is possible to to have more than one thing on the mind), this is what went through my head – at the same time:

“Oooh, the gate opening is narrower. Look at those people – I wonder whose child they belong to. What am I going to eat for lunch? Who has just WhatsApped me – I felt a vibration on my Apple Watch. I hope my clients are gentle on me today. I still have a blog post to write, and I’m not sure I’ll be finished that work press release, so I should do it tonight”.

And this, kids, is why moms bang into gates. Because they have eleventy and twenty nineteen thoughts going on at the same time, and because it’s so hard to focus on just one thing at a time, or, as they call it in Zen Buddhism, “live in the moment”. Especially when life largely demands so many actions and responses in so many moments.

With cellphonegate, it was something similar – I just wasn’t thinking sensibly about keeping my phone dry, because I was thinking of seven and a a half other things… get the dog on a leash, make sure the phone is in a safe place so that it doesn’t break (forget the other damage), close gate, put keys in safe spot, don’t let the dog run away on the leash, put on the right French podcast, and start listening and trying to learn. And five kilometres later, I had a phone that was wet, but at least I could say “J’habite en Afrique du Sud” and “J’ai deux enfants”.

And the driver’s licence? Well, I think I *might* have dropped it along with some cash while walking around the field at Eldorado Park stadium, looking for my car (it took about 25 minutes on sore legs) that I had parked a few hours earlier when it was still dark. Forty two kilometres later while trying to find my car and blocking all the angry cyclists on Twitter who were having a good go at me after I asked about a cycling rule, I took out my key and some money for the car guard, and I’m guessing it was here that I lost my car licence. Or was it? Truth is, I have no cooking clue when I lost it definitely. And I don’t even remember not having it. I remember coming home a tad tired after running a marathon, unpacking my stuff, without a memory (I think?) of having no licence with me.

New car door. New phone. New driver’s licence. And hopefully a new mindful me this month.